I'd like to go to Openwrt on the TP-Link EAP245s in my house. Unfortunately this issue appears to make it not a good idea. I hope the community will address the issue.
I wonder if the EAP225 v3 has the same problem?
Different, and far more common, radio. Shouldn't have this issue.
For what it's worth, I think the EAP225v3 and variants with the same radio have more users than the EAP245v3, and I haven't heard any of them complain about missing 80MHz support.
Is there some 5MHz channel and channel width at which EAP access points with openwrt have no problem?
I bought two of these units to replace my unsupported Ruckus gear and was bummed to run into this.
Switching to the non-ct driver allows me to transmit at 80mhz and give me comparable speeds to the AC1750 ruckus gear. This is a 2-3x improvement over the default ct driver in my testing.
I'll add this here since I had to dig deeper to find it. Works on 22.03-rc5
opkg update
opkg remove kmod-ath10k-ct ath10k-firmware-qca988x-ct
opkg install kmod-ath10k ath10k-firmware-qca988x
reboot
Hello and thank you very much for providing this very important and valuable information.
I don't know if it's coincidence or not, but I was talking about this (lack of 5Ghz performance on EAP245 v3, using OpenWRT), yesterday in another topic:
What kind of download throughput are you able to get with this driver change?
With the stock firmware this device (EAP245 v3) is able to reach ~900 Mbps download.
As I said in the other thread, maximum throughput is important to me, but if I was able to get about 80-90% of the stock firmware speed, I would switch to OpenWRT, so your finding may be the key for me to switch to OpenWRT
Again, thank you very much.
If this is a solution maybe this should be changed in the source code.
I really, really hope this is the solution to this problem.
This maybe the key for me (and I hope others) to switch to OpenWRT
https://forum.openwrt.org/t/why-the-switch-to-unstable-ath10k-ct/27258?u=flygarn12
Little background information.
Thank you very much for the link.
I will dig a little bit myself about this stuff.
Meanwhile, I will patiently wait for @adamcstephens reply about the performance results.
I'm not sure what these can do on stock firmware. I received them and installed openwrt immediately. My iperf3 connections on the ct driver were ~100Mbps which I found unacceptable. The non-ct driver is good enough for my needs, but perhaps isn't getting everything out of the hardware. I have wired gigabit when I really need speed and my internet is only 400/40.
connection to Linux thinkpad:
freq: 5260 MHz, ctr1: 5290 MHz, channel: 52 (width: 80 MHz), bands: 2 │
│beacons: 6931, lost: 5, avg sig: -44 dBm, interval: 0.1s, DTIM: 2 │
│rx rate: 520.0 MBit/s VHT-MCS 5 80MHz short GI VHT-NSS 2 │
│tx rate: 866.7 MBit/s VHT-MCS 9 80MHz short GI VHT-NSS 2 │
│tx power: 21 dBm (125.89 mW), power save: on
AP transmit test on my Linux thinkpad:
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate Retr Cwnd
[ 5] 0.00-1.00 sec 40.9 MBytes 343 Mbits/sec 0 1.51 MBytes
[ 5] 1.00-2.00 sec 38.8 MBytes 325 Mbits/sec 0 1.51 MBytes
[ 5] 2.00-3.00 sec 33.8 MBytes 283 Mbits/sec 467 557 KBytes
[ 5] 3.00-4.00 sec 40.0 MBytes 336 Mbits/sec 0 604 KBytes
[ 5] 4.00-5.00 sec 38.8 MBytes 325 Mbits/sec 0 650 KBytes
[ 5] 5.00-6.00 sec 31.2 MBytes 262 Mbits/sec 0 686 KBytes
[ 5] 6.00-7.00 sec 30.0 MBytes 252 Mbits/sec 2 533 KBytes
[ 5] 7.00-8.00 sec 28.8 MBytes 241 Mbits/sec 0 597 KBytes
[ 5] 8.00-9.00 sec 25.0 MBytes 210 Mbits/sec 0 643 KBytes
[ 5] 9.00-10.00 sec 32.5 MBytes 273 Mbits/sec 0 675 KBytes
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate Retr
[ 5] 0.00-10.00 sec 340 MBytes 285 Mbits/sec 469 sender
[ 5] 0.00-10.01 sec 336 MBytes 282 Mbits/sec receiver
AP transmit test on my M1 macbook:
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate Retr Cwnd
[ 5] 0.00-1.00 sec 10.2 MBytes 86.0 Mbits/sec 109 370 KBytes
[ 5] 1.00-2.00 sec 26.2 MBytes 220 Mbits/sec 0 421 KBytes
[ 5] 2.00-3.00 sec 31.2 MBytes 262 Mbits/sec 12 170 KBytes
[ 5] 3.00-4.00 sec 22.5 MBytes 189 Mbits/sec 3 171 KBytes
[ 5] 4.00-5.00 sec 22.5 MBytes 189 Mbits/sec 11 221 KBytes
[ 5] 5.00-6.00 sec 20.0 MBytes 168 Mbits/sec 18 158 KBytes
[ 5] 6.00-7.00 sec 16.2 MBytes 136 Mbits/sec 4 133 KBytes
[ 5] 7.00-8.00 sec 22.5 MBytes 189 Mbits/sec 2 167 KBytes
[ 5] 8.00-9.00 sec 20.0 MBytes 168 Mbits/sec 4 156 KBytes
[ 5] 9.00-10.00 sec 15.0 MBytes 126 Mbits/sec 12 181 KBytes
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate Retr
[ 5] 0.00-10.00 sec 206 MBytes 173 Mbits/sec 175 sender
[ 5] 0.00-10.01 sec 203 MBytes 170 Mbits/sec receiver
(edits: add mac, replace with correct data)
Thank you very much for doing this.
The performance jump with non-CT driver is significant (the ct driver throughput is ridiculous - 2.4Ghz tier performance / You probably got better results with 2.4Ghz directly), but, from your results, the throughput seems to take a hit compared to the stock firmware.
Just to be clear (and I'm sorry if it sounds stupid): the iperf3 tests where done between 2 local machines? Or were done between a local and a remote machine?
I'm asking this, because your thinkpad result seems relatively close to your internet limit (400/40), which could explain the performance hit.
The mac m1 result is a bit strange (just to be clear, I don't have any apple devices), because I had the idea that apple devices had top notch wireless capabilities (at least the iphones) and theres a 100 Mbps difference compared with the thinkpad.
I know that speedtest is considered unreliable compared to iperf3, but have you done some tests to compare?
On a side note: I noticed that the device seems to be on power saving mode (│tx power: 21 dBm (125.89 mW), power save: on). Do this have any influence in the throughput?
Again, thank you very much for providing all this information. I'm sure it will be very useful to many people.
Yeah, all tests are done from the local network. I was a bit surprised myself that the M1 was slower.
For another comparison I just ran a fast.com test on my iPad and pulled 230Mbps, which is close to half of the speed of the Ruckus APs (R600) that is clearly maxing the Internet connection.
I haven't tried changing power save, but the reverse numbers (client transmit) are even higher so I'd not expect this to change much on the AP transmit path. Even this non-ct driver is clearly losing some of the potential of these devices.
Sadly I'd based my expectations on these devices on my eap225 outdoor which performs pretty well. Oh well, still planning to move forward with the eap245's and hope that performance can be improved.
It's really unfortunate this subpar 5Ghz performance on OpenWRT and I really hoped that the driver change could, at least, come close (80-90%) to the stock performance.
I really hope this driver issue gets fixed in the near future, so I can safely change to OpenWRT. I wish I had the knowledge to help...
As I said before, the stock firmware is decent and does everything I need, the only thing that concerns me is the security aspect of the device (lack of WPA3 and future firmware fixes).
If you find some relevant information, I would be grateful if you could ping me. I will do the same if I find something relevant.
As a side note, I wish Ruckus was more open with their firmware and that it wasn't so outrageously expensive where I am (even used). It would be the ultimate AP (It kind of is, if you have the money and don't mind to replace it as soon as the company abandons the device).
Thank you very much taking your time to answer my questions and enjoy your new toys
I realized the module/firmware I swapped above was incorrect, so anybody looking at this later should ignore it. (I can't edit it any longer)
That said, I ended up returning the EAP245 v3 and purchasing Unifi 6 Lite devices instead. They're a bit pricier, even at the open box price, but are significantly faster. They're actually an upgrade over my previous Ruckus devices.
I bought the EAP245 v3 a while ago specifically because it was supported by OpenWRT.
Before flashing it I found this thread and still decided to give it a go and see if I ran into the same problems.
Did some tests before flashing to get a baseline wifi speed with stock firmware.
On stock: I'm getting 450 Mbps up/down on 5GHZ wifi (almost maxing out ISP speed)
With OpenWRT: 450 up 125 down (OpenWrt 21.02.0 r16279-5cc0535800)
So quite the drop in RX performance and making it not unusable for my use case.
I noticed the discussions about it possibly being related to the CT firmware so I went down that rabbit hole. After some failed attempts I think I managed to install the non CT firmware as follows:
opkg update
opkg install ath10k-firmware-qca99x0 --force-overwrite
opkg install kmod-ath10k --force-overwrite
opkg remove ath10k-firmware-qca99x0-ct kmod-ath10k-ct
On my first attempts I did it in a different order (first opkg remove and then opkg install) but that gave me the following error on the opkg install command (i'm pretty sure I had already done opkg update prior to that)
Unknown package 'ath10k-firmware-qca99x0'.
Unknown package 'kmod-ath10k'.
Collected errors:
* opkg_install_cmd: Cannot install package ath10k-firmware-qca99x0.
* opkg_install_cmd: Cannot install package kmod-ath10k.
I wasn't able to recover from this one.. It could be unrelated to this, but for some reason I no longer had any connectivity on the device itself (ping to 8.8.8.8 timed out, packes unable to update etc. Somehow I was still connected to the internet from the outgoing eth port, not sure what was going on here).
Afterwards I reinstalled OpenWRT using the sysupgrade image and doing a factory reset I managed to get back up and running. I did the steps above (the first list of commands I mentioned). Added the --force-overwrite after getting the following error:
check_data_file_clashes: Package ath10k-firmware-qca99x0 wants to install file /lib/firmware/ath10k/QCA99X0/hw2.0/firmware-5.bin
After this, I THINK I have the non CT firmware up and working. Since I'm new at this, I'm not 100% sure so correct me if I'm wrong.
root@OpenWrt:~# opkg list-installed | grep ath10
ath10k-board-qca99x0 - 20201118-3
ath10k-firmware-qca99x0 - 20211216-1
kmod-ath10k - 5.4.143+5.10.42-1-1
Sadly, I still get the same results when doing a speedtest on the 5Ghz wifi.
I really hope this can be fixed because it's a perfect device, but I'd really like to get rid of the stock firmware.
I have tried the eap225v4 now and there the driver seems to work with 5GHz bw above 20MHz.
But the problem persists that full wifi connection is established and no or sporadic data transfer is on both 245v3 and 225v4.
But this problem wasn’t there on the 245v3 from the original intallation I did beginning in the winter, then it was fast like a flying rabbit! This problem started exactly when I upgraded the eap245 in the beginning of the summer and then the drivers had been updated and after that the 5GHz wifi is really buggy.
So if I understand you correctly you previously ran OpenWRT on the EAP245v3 with good 5Ghz speeds? You don't by any chance remember which version that was?
Yes it did work very well with the image I used during the winter!
I never tested it with any high speeds but bw selection worked, wpa3 worked and it wasn’t a single glitch i the surfing.
I have to get back on what build it was.
The first anomaly I got after the spring upgrade was directly after power on and configuration was done the the ubuntu laptop refused to connect to the wifi while the iOS devices worked? By chance after trial and error I changed from 40 to 20MHz and then also the laptop started working and after that the problem with the 5GHz wifi is connected everywhere but the actual data streams stops sporadically on all devices.
My plan now is to simply roll back my 245 to the “winter” image as soon I got the time to do it and see if it starts working “as before” again?
Since I was also pulling my hair out getting the VLANs to work I've reverted back to stock firmware for now. A bit disappointing to see that OpenWRT is not really working well on the device and there is not a lot of incentive to fix it. Probably should come with a warning on the device page to notify users it will cut their 5Ghz speeds drastically.
@svanheule, I had a look at the EAP225v3 but it only has a 100Mbps ETH port, so I guess that one isn't really an option for me either